Marked
by Avari20
Summary: Bellamy and Clarke are young and tough. They've worked hard for the last year to make life on Earth bearable. But now that they have, what next? Do they stay together? Do they go their separate ways? A bit of a plot bunny one shot, nothing to do with Uneven. Complete.


**I do not own The 100.**

**This was a plot bunny that wouldn't leave me alone. Has nothing to do with Uneven. Cover Image credit to the wonderful Wilderbiz (tumblr).**

* * *

The best way to get over someone was to get under someone else.

That was probably the stupidest advice I had ever heard anyone give, but as I sat near the fire one evening, watching the people around me relax after another long day of surviving, I had to admit that it sounded tempting.

Human relationships were complicated. I used to wonder why people would assume that sex could heal a bruised heart. Now I realized that it wasn't the sex that mattered. It was the connection. The idea that a person could still feel good even when life wasn't exactly going their way.

Nothing on Earth went anybody's way. Earth and her terrifying wonders did exactly as they liked, when they liked.

Hard to believe that it seemed almost normal now. Compared to the mundane sameness of the Ark, the rigid rules and the invisible lines drawn everywhere, demarcating everything, Earth's wildness frightened me to my bones a year ago. It changed me, morphed me from a girl who had never run before, to a woman who could kill a deer and skin it if necessary.

Earth was infecting us all with her savagery.

My gaze slipped to Bellamy's house in the distance. Some of us more than others.

The Ark had landed. Some of us went back to our families. Some of our families came to us. The Ark's group was smaller and ours was bigger, but we wouldn't be equal for a very long time. I stayed with the Delinquents and stood by Bellamy when we declared ourselves independent. We'd finally found our way and we were going to stick with it. Our job as settlers for the Ark was done.

It was still a symbiotic relationship. They needed us. We needed what they had. We were all trying to make our way in this old but new world.

And the Grounders...well, they found that they'd much rather deal with us than the people of the Ark.

The lesser of two evils. Instead of being assimilated back into our original population, I could feel us slowly but surely becoming part of the Valley Grounders. Some of us were integrating better than others, pairing off into couples. We already had some kids running around.

We had permanent housing. We had allies. We still had enemies, but not as many as before.

And I had decisions to make.

I couldn't pinpoint the exact moment the relationship between Bellamy and I changed. I only know that one day I looked around and we were dependent, linked together. Nobody thought of one without the other. We were a team. A unit. Each half of something whole.

Was it romantic? Not at first. It was necessity. Then it was respect. Then it was...awareness. I knew Bellamy was a guy. It simply took a while for me to realize that he was also a man.

I smiled to myself. That was my mistake, I guess. I should have just ignored it, but I suppose it was stupid to think I could ignore human nature. We lived in a very small society. Every day was a struggle. I spent countless hours in his company. Sometimes I think it was inevitable I would take notice of him. It was when I made the choice to do something about it that things went wrong.

We were together. That was us. And it was great.

But things changed. We got a better handle on our enviornment. Relationships with outsiders improved. We weren't the interlopers anymore. Danger still existed, but wasn't so immediate anymore.

I began to wonder...was I with Bellamy because I wanted to be, or because he was the logical choice?

Bellamy was passionate, raw, and at times so caught up in his emotions he couldn't see past the moment. He was also strong and intuitive when it came to people. I would never say he was anything other than a good, if flawed, man.

Earth was about choices. At first I thought we had too many to pick from. Looking back, I realized that was an illusion. When there were only a hundred people—and that number dwindled far too quickly for my taste—did that mean we could be with who we wanted, or did that mean we were with who we had to be with?

It was a messy question and it went both ways. Would Bellamy have chosen me if there was a larger pool of girls to get to know? I wanted to say yes, but I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure at all.

Then the Ark landed. We opened trade with the Valley Grounders. Suddenly we had options.

It wasn't only about that. Bellamy was protective, sometimes stiflingly so. My doubts and my fears started to make his presence claustrophobic. We started to fight about it.

I cringed, remembering some of the things we both said.

"_You think there are a hundred other doctors out there, Princess? You're all we've got. I'm gonna keep you safe."_

It was like he made my fears real. I couldn't fault him for protecting his resources. It just made sense. But it didn't stop me from blurting out what was on my mind. _"Why are you with me?"_

He'd looked confused. _"What the hell are you talking about?"_

"_I asked why you're with me. Why me, Bellamy? Because I'm the doctor? Because I'm all you've got?"_

"_Are you friggin' serious?"_

"_I'm worried, Bellamy, alright? I'm worried that we're in this because our options were limited."_

He'd tilted his head. "_Were_?" he repeated flatly.

Dammit. _"The Ark's here. We've made peace with the Grounders."_

"_So what are you saying, Princess? Now that you've got someone else to pick from, you want to spread your wings?"_

My heart thumped painfully. "_No_." I closed my eyes. "_Yes. I don't know._"

"_Think hard, Clarke."_ His voice had gotten dark, the kind of darkness I only heard when he talked about one of Octavia's boyfriends.

I put my hands behind my back to stop them from shaking. I wasn't afraid of him. I was afraid of what I was doing, of what I was saying. _"I'm eighteen years old. You're almost twenty three. I've never had a serious boyfriend before. I've never dated. You've had one night stands and one or two people on the Ark, but you've never gotten close to anybody either. Doesn't that worry you?"_

He was glaring at me. _"Is this the part where you tell me you want to see other people?"_

"_Bellamy,"_ I pleaded. _"Please don't be angry. I'm not saying any of this to hurt you. I'm not even sure why I'm saying it."_ And that was true. I just... I didn't want to hide anything from him. I didn't want either of us to make a mistake.

"_Oh, I'm angry, Princess. I'm fucking furious. Tell you what. How about I go out there and pick someone? Anyone. I'll take her to bed, and then in the morning I'll let you know if you're the one I still want or not._"

I felt that like a slap to the face. I knew all the blood had drained out of my cheeks. I steadied myself, raising my chin. _"I know you're hurt and confused, but that was too much. I'm trying to tell you how I feel, not attack you." _

"_My girl is telling me that I'm not enough for her. Pardon me for fucking taking that the wrong way."_

My temper sparked. _"I'm not saying that! I'm saying that I want us to know for sure!" _

"_You know how people do that? They fuck others. That's what you're proposing, Clarke. Don't friggin' pretend otherwise."_

This was escalating, and quick. I tried to rein in my anger. We needed to talk, calmly and rationally. There was a way to handle this, just like we'd handled all of our problems before. I linked my fingers together, striving for serenity. _"It doesn't have to be like that-"_

"_You're damn right it doesn't,"_ he'd snorted._ "Nobody in this camp would have the 'nads to cross me when it comes to you."_

I blinked, incredulous. "_Excuse me?_" I asked him in a deceptively calm voice.

"_You heard me. Try all you want. Nobody's going to take you up on your offer."_

I wasn't going to offer myself to anyone. Not until he said it. Not until Bellamy Blake made it seem as though my only choice was him or no one. _"Take that back." _

He crossed his arms, an angry, unapologetic asshole. _"Like hell."_

My nostrils flared. _"Not everybody is under your thumb. More than that, there is such a thing as free will. You have no idea what I was going to say. You have no idea how well we could have handled this if you'd been willing to listen to me. I am not the bad guy for feeling this way. We could have talked, set rules, approached this rationally and worked as a team. Now you can just go to hell."_

And then I stormed out, knocking his hand away when he would have pulled me back.

That was days ago. He spent most of the time glaring at me from across the distance of the settlement. He didn't speak to me. Fine. I didn't want to speak to him either. We had had some blowups in the past, but nothing that left me feeling this hurt. I wasn't trying to break us up, dammit. I was trying to air my feelings. I was trying to tell him what was bothering me.

Even as I was angry, I understood what that must have sounded like from his end. I got it. I really did. But that didn't mean my feelings were going to disappear over night. That didn't mean I wanted to be attacked for something I couldn't help.

I thought about apologizing, but couldn't bring myself to do it. I was sorry for how it turned into a fight. I wasn't sorry for telling him. If anything, I felt like I deserved an apology from Bellamy. He wanted to cut me off from any chance to work through these doubts. He didn't even want to entertain the idea that, as hard as it would be for the both of us, we might be wrong.

But we could be right too, I thought angrily. What better way to understand how much we wanted to be together than to try being with someone else? Not everything was about sex. In my head, I imagined that we would agree on rules, something like kissing was okay but sex wasn't. We would talk to each other. We would work on things together. And then, in the end, we wouldn't take a look back at our relationship and realize that we were together because it was convenient.

So I waited for him to apologize. He didn't. But earlier today he caught me watching him, and he'd smiled.

And he'd grabbed the hand of the girl he was talking to, mocking me.

I'd turned and walked away. If I didn't, I would have marched over there and punched Bellamy Blake in his stupid eye. He was rubbing it in. Turning things around on me. Telling me that he could if he wanted, but I wouldn't.

Because Bellamy Blake was King.

So there I was, heartsore and angry, sitting on one of the logs and watching everybody else have a good time. Or at least look content. Bellamy wasn't anywhere to be seen. Neither was the girl he'd been with.

Every muscle in my body demanded that I go after him and have it out. I refused to move. He was trying to make me jealous. I took jealousy as a good sign, but that was not going to spur me into action. No. As angry as I was, as hurt, I wanted to see exactly how Bellamy would react to this. I wanted to see how far he would go.

I waited with a sense of impending doom, knowing that this was going to change my life. If he reacted this badly to a perfectly normal concern, then...well, I didn't know what. I only knew I couldn't take being with someone that couldn't talk things out with me. We could talk about everything else in the camp. We should be able to communicate about our relationship, without fear of the other person doing something spiteful in retaliation.

And I damned well was not going to cry about it until I knew for sure, one way or the other.

I waited for what seemed like hours. In the end, I couldn't wait anymore. I stood up and brushed my clothes off. My heart felt like a painful vise, and my steps were heavy as I went back to my crude little house.

I was almost there when Bellamy appeared out of the darkness. He hung back, still shadowed. One of the torches we'd stuck in the ground around the camp cast a flickering light over his skin. He was tense. "Clarke."

I stopped, looking him up and down. My jaw was clenched and refused to unlatch.

He hesitated, doing something with his hands. He turned just a little, moving the shadows. They ran across the line of his throat, exposing the spot just above his collar.

My blood went cold.

A hickey.

I stared in his face. Hard.

Guilt.

"I see." I looked at the flame of the torch, letting it blind me. "Congratulations. You made your point."

He stepped closer. "I didn't sleep with her." He sounded agonized.

But he let her mark him. I wasn't a fool; there was a lot more two people could do than straight fucking, as Bellamy once called it. I kept my chin raised, though, despite feeling like a giant hole just appeared in my chest.

There was no hiding that hickey. People would see tomorrow. They'd remember him going off with her, and they'd know.

The silence stretched out between us.

I wanted to shout at him. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I didn't do any of that. I was upfront with him. He punished me. I was hurt and he felt guilty. That was that.

So I started walking again, giving him a wide berth. He stepped right into my path, arms out. "I didn't sleep with her," he repeated. "I swear. I was a fucking idiot, but I didn't take it that far." He tried to take hold of my shoulders. "Princess, I'm sorry-"

I slapped him. I slapped him so hard the sound cracked in the darkness and his head snapped to the side. I slapped him so hard my hand hurt almost as much as the rest of me. I hit him so hard I wanted to hit him again, just to feel the sensation all over.

I'd hit a few people in my life, but never like this.

He grabbed me by the hair and yanked me into him, trapping me with his arms and forcing me to stay. My face was plastered to his chest, near that damn mark, and I wanted to bite and kick him to get him away. "Let me go!"

His cheek bore down on me so hard I couldn't move. "No," he bit back. His arms were locked around my body like a vise I couldn't escape. "No way in hell."

I pummeled his stomach and he took it with a grunt, tightening his hold until I was pinned. "Let go, dammit!"

"I love you, Clarke." He kissed my ear, my crown, anything he could reach without letting me go. "I love you. _I love you_."

"I don't care," I raged. I didn't in that moment. He'd never said it before in the entire time we were together, and I always thought it was so obvious that he didn't have to. To do it now? Now? Too much. It was just all too much. I didn't want to think. I didn't want to feel. I just wanted to lash out the way he'd lashed out at me.

A few tears leaked out, and I despised that.

"You care, and I care, and fuck anybody who says otherwise." He buried his fingers deeper into my hair. "Listen to me. I'm sorry. I'm so goddamn sorry that I'm sick with it. I hated that you were having doubts and I wanted to get back at you for that."

Did he think I wasn't intelligent enough to figure that out on my own? "You were gone for a lot longer than a simple kiss, Bellamy," I said coldly. "How many other marks did she leave on you?"

He stiffened. "It wasn't like that."

Because I could trust what he said now. Anger sparked, higher than ever before, and my brain shut down.

I sank my teeth into his shoulder.

He stifled a cry and wrenched away, gritting his teeth. I kneed him in the thigh and broke his hold completely, watching him stumble away while I panted. "Another mark for the road,"I seethed.

He growled, advancing.

"Don't." The word cut between us like a knife, bringing him up short. I felt wild and out of control. I didn't know what I was going to do next if he continued to push, but I knew that I'd go down fighting.

I couldn't categorize my emotions. I couldn't do anything. I just stared him down. Whatever Bellamy saw, it made him clench his fists at his sides.

I glared, and started to walk, watching him the way one animal watches another. He didn't move, not even when I was almost to my hut. He didn't say anything until opened my door.

"We're not done with each other, Princess. We are far from done."

"I'm done with you," I retorted. I wasn't sure how I'd feel tomorrow, but right then and there, that was the truth.

He stood tall in the shadows. "I don't give a fuck."

_**The End.**_


End file.
